If you speak several languages...which one do you "think" in?

Question

I think I would always "think" in my native tongue.(which is Pig Latin , of course.)

Answer 1

I think in Esperanto.

Answer 2

It's your mother tongue.  Also known as your first language.  I speak two languages but I always think in my first language, which is not English.

Answer 3

Growing up I learnt English and Serbian at the same time...but I mainly think in English...

Answer 4

None - ignorance is bliss.

Answer 5

oh denie, you are over here..lol

thats an interesting question, never thought of it like that.....

Answer 6

the 1st language u learned. youd have to learn another language by thinking in your first language.

Answer 7

Ah, THE question!

I learned two languages at the same time, in my family. The problem was my parents wanted only one and my grandparents the other. As I grew up switching between my folk's place and their folk's place, it was crazy; at some point, my brother and I mixed them so badly nobody was able to understand us.

Then, in school, there were French and Russian - English was the language of 'the enemy', hence some sort of taboo.

We had a native French speaker as a teacher and it was cool; she used to bring kids from France who stayed with us and we were all 'native speakers' pretty soon.

My grandparents gave up eventually and I was able to speak their language only during the holidays, then less and less, until I got rusty. The interesting fact, many years later, while being in the neighbor country whose language I used to speak as a child, after a few days of mostly listening (I was understanding pretty much everything but my tongue refused to move, LOL), it all came back to me.

In high school, however, we had bursary kids who were the real deal: native bilingualists. I asked and asked and their facial expressions always went blank: they were never able to answer THE question.

I think about it sometimes and only discover I have to mentally translate from my best known language into all the others.

So I'm afraid this does not make me a polyglot :(

Answer 8

I normally think in my first language. If I am busy talking or writing in another language (as I am doing right now) I think in that language while formulating my idea.

The syntax of Afrikaans and English are too different to interchange words that would allow me to think in one language while communicating in another. I can do that in Afrikaans/German, because the languages are similar.

If I am in an English speaking situation all day, I may think afterwards about the topics discussed in English, even though it is far from being my first language. It is easier to think in a another language, than to translate. That's why being a translater or interpreter is not that straightforward. You actually have get to the bottom of what a passage wants to say, and reformulate it in another language, as if the idea came about in the language of the hearer or reader.

It must be a bit cumbersome thinking in Pig Latin :-), but at least the syntax is exactly the same as English.

Answer 9

I think in my native tongue usually, but sometimes I find myself thinking in my second language.  I don't know if this is just an exercise or not.

Answer 10

i speak english, bahasa malaysia (the main malaysian language) and malayalam (one of the indian language) but i think in english.. i speak it most of the time.

denie, how can i answer your other question to me without making it public? regarding malaysia and time zones..